Discussions of new films, books, television shows, and media indirectly related to magic and magicians. For example, there may be a book on mnemonics or theatrical technique we should know or at least know about.

A grizzled old pro I know who is even older than me said to me a couple of weeks ago that magic as we know it will be dead within 10 years with all this internet exposure and too easy access to information which is supposed to be secret. I thought he was being overly pessimistic but sometimes I wonder...............................

I was shocked to learn, when I looked it up today that the world's population has almost tripled since 1947 and Orson Wells' prophesy. That titanically increases the odds that there will be spoilers out there, exposing secrets of magic. They are probably of the same people who gleefully told their little brothers and sisters that there is no Santa Claus and reveled in the ensuing tears of disappointment and disillusionment. Through counseling I have overcome the trauma of learning there is no Santa, but no one will ever convince me - EVER - that there is no Easter Bunny!

The digital world and its audiences have an insatiable appetite for content that grows exponentially. And people absolutely love being let in on (or think they're being let in on) "secrets" be they of magic tricks or anything else. Guess how many clicks an article or video would get if you promised to reveal how to make KFC's original recipe chicken at home or just had the list of ingredients in Coca Cola's formula? (Both continue to recur in the media from time to time.)

And the most brilliant title ever (at least from a marketing perspective) for a book was The Secret. The "secret" it revealed had been around for ages, but after the content was shined and polished and that title was slapped on the cover it became quite the lucrative release.

So unfortunately magic is going to increasingly become the target for such pieces because access to magic secrets is so easy and people can't resist the urge to be let in on something "secret."

brianarudolph wrote:Unfortunately in the minds of those who are the target consumers for this kind of content (and even more unfortunately in the minds of most of the producers of this kind of content) methods = secrets.

This is a performing art - the consumer is the audience seeking entertainment. Backstage intrigue and illicit/secret stuff ... meh

At a guess it's related to folks exploring the differences between deceived and fooled. A social mis-step when exploring the shifting boundaries between foreground, background and presumed context?

We're in a strange relationship with our fiction, you see. Sometimes we fear it's taking us over, Sometimes we beg to be taken over by it...sometimes we want to see what's inside it.

Ellis And of course ... Seneca wrote something about pointless fussing a while ago by way of his humorous "moral letters to Lucilius" - from the one with oft misquoted lines about magicians and their cups and balls: "They lost much time in quibbling about words and in sophistical argumentation; all that sort of thing exercises the wit to no purpose. We tie knots and bind up words in double meanings, and then try to untie them."